By Porscha Outlaw and Jennifer Garcia
“I’m so tired of typing all day,” complains Freshman, Katarin Gomez while bumping her head on her desk. Bored out of her mind, Katarin Gomez endures her tedious work and advances in doing her typing work anyway. Last semester, technology class consisted of writing, presentations, and learning basic computer applications. Many ninth grade students such as Katarin Gomez have complained about technology class being boring and repetitive, but not for long.
Since the beginning of this year, teaching code to freshman in technology has been a requirement that is usually taught in second semester. Learning how to code is not a skill that comes easy, but fortunately ninth grade technology teacher, Ms. De la Garza, has helpful lessons planned for students. She said, “We started out at the beginning of the semester doing some activities on Code.org, which were simple lessons using block code where they had the visual representation of the actual script. They did a lot of puzzles with those, so they could get a hang of what code actually is.”
Continuing, De La Garza explained that she had lessons planned once students finished the first project. She said, “Then we’re going to do another challenge with the Ozobots where they’re going to program it like a roomba.” She continued to explain the difficulties students might face during the lessons due to the introduction of “if” statements. Ms. DLG said, “It’s actually very, very, hard, and is going to bring in the conditionals like, ‘If it hit this, then go here.’ They’re probably going to use loops, but Ozobots were created by robotosists at MIT, so the people who do the real ones are very advanced.” Once students are done and prepared enough, they will begin coding in syntax without the visual representation of the block code. Evidently, freshman have a great deal of fun activities planned out for them in future lessons.
Learning how to code is not a skill that comes easy. For instance, when approaching freshman, Katarin Gomez, we asked her how she felt about starting to learn code. Katarin Gomez said, “It definitely takes some time to get the hand of and it is very stressful, but when I work hard it is not impossible to do.”
However, coding does come easier to some than others. Freshman Destiny Villanueva, who was exposed to coding in middle school, said, “It’s not that difficult, but it does get frustrating.”
The class of 2019 also had the opportunity to code their freshman year at APB. Junior Alberto Molina said, “I was very nervous. I was scared. I thought it was going to be very complicated. I think I did pretty decent. I remember doing the coding tasks on the coding program and I always got a B average.”
De La Garza noticed a change in students when different topics were introduced. She said, “One thing I’m seeing is that the kids who struggled with some things last semester are doing really well with this. They have have been writing much more lines of code than anyone else.” On the other hand, she explained how some students are different. She said, “There are kids who, are really the opposite. They might have really excelled the things we were doing that were speaking, writing, and reading oriented, but now going into computer science, they are finding that it is really hard.”
However, one of the most complicated parts of coding is remembering lots of rules and paying attention to minor details. This does not mean that freshman must give up. On the contrary, upperclassmen have some encouraging words for this years freshman.
Senior Nancy Reyes said, “Pay attention in that class because coding is very hard, so stayed focused.” Being attentive in class is important at all times, but when learning code, minor instructions make a difference.
In agreement with Nancy, Alberto said, “Always pay attention since the first day of coding. Always pay attention.”
Additionally, this hard work can benefit those who learn to code in the future. Nancy said, “If I want to do anything in coding it would benefit me because I would know what I’m getting myself into.”
Outside of career choices, De La Garza said, “It is something that gets kids working together and solving problems, which is something we do a lot at this school, and in life, you work through problems. Getting kids to collaborate, communicate, and work on their problem solving skills may pay off in other areas of life.” She continued to explain that technology and code is slowly advancing in terms of job opportunities, so even learning a meager amount of code could help in being more applicable for jobs.
All in all, learning to code in ninth grade is something all students had to endure. Some students appreciated the class while others preferred not to be near it. However it can provide students with knowledge that can benefit them inside and outside of school.
